This blog is dedicated to Computer RolePlaying Games (CRPG) that have been released a long time ago or new games with CRPG heritage and that I will revisit in one way or another. I will either replay them or write about the hidden gems well worth playing today. Games will be played through Dosbox or WinUAE.

Currently playing: Sword Coast Legends, Skyrim

September 12, 2011

Next games coming up ?

Although I am still trying to complete Shadows over Riva and will do my utmost to really go to end with it, I am thinking about two other games to try. I am not sure I will really play them for real but I am seriously considering in giving them a try. My two targets are either the classic Bard's Tale 3 - Thieves of fate or the Amiga version of Crystal Dragon.

Bard's Tale is a real CRPG Classic and was the first game that led me into roleplaying games on the computer with the Commodore 64. At that time I was no power user but managed to get to Mangars Tower but never completed the game. Altough I have tried Dragon Wars which is the true successor to Bards Tale III, I think BT 3 might be more linear in nature. I have also read there is automap in this third game and that is very helpful.

Bard's Tale III

Crystal Dragon was released in 1994 to the Amiga platform and had excellent music. I am still listening to it and will give you a taste of it below. I only tried the demo version of CU Amiga but liked it a lot. Unfortunately I was unable to buy the game in Sweden at that time. I have read it is a very, very difficult game but I am still hooked by the music and the good graphics and so it does appeal to me.

I found out that the game is now released for free so that part is no problem. I have had some problems to get it to start in WinUAE. Perhaps I have the harddrive version and if so I have to figure out how to solve that part. It was 15 years ago I left my beloved Amiga 1200.

3 comments:

Why? Because it would be nice to see some Amiga games being played. I recently thought of playing it again, but ended up with Ambermoon instead. C.D. is a great game, but I don't think I finished it last time I played it--at the time it was released.. Guess I'll have a go at it when I finish Ambermoon--that or Black Crypt.

I tried BT 3 as a kid, but it didn't grab the same way BT 1 and 2 did. Random encounters no longer being checked in real time was a big impovement in BT 3, but apart from that the game didn't feel right to me. All the monster had silly, goofy names I could not relate to. I mean how do I know that a "Goresucker" is much more dangerous than a "Bloodfiend", for example? I only played the first area, and apart from Brihasti ap Tarj and his pet dragon, I don't think there was a single fixed encounter. Nor did the monsters have any special attacks that inflict statuses like Old, Insane, Poisoned, Level Drain etc. In short, it felt empty.And when completing the first area you are given an absurd amount of XP, so all character progression (which was much of the fun in BT 1 and 2) flies out the window, when all your characters suddenly are maxed out. So strongly suspecting that the rest of the game would be mostly slogging thorugh endless random encounters with random monsters with random names, only interrupted by a few puzzles, I gave this game a miss when I recently contemplated playing it.

I have struggled with WinUAE but so far failed to get Crystal Dragon to work. I will still try though. However, In the meantime I could not refrain myself from starting to create characters in Bards Tale III so I will probably go ahead with that one first. I might just regret it but I still have fond memories of BT2 and BT1. I hope it will not end just like the revisit to Faery Tale did.

If you like old-school RPGs, you´ll love this!

Who am I ?

Stockholm, Sweden
I grew up with Commodore 64 and Amiga and the first CRPG that totally blowed me away was Bard´s Tale for C-64 in 1988.
New RPGs tends to be more and more simplistic and consolified so I have begun to return to the roots to feed my hunger for CRPGS.
Professionally I work as a systems developer and project leader.